iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 23h

"Today's a good day for you to put a shirt on," the ranger said. A road trip story about being young, dumb, and completely unaware it was the last time. joadt.substack.com/p/today-is-a-good-day-to-die

joadt.substack.com

TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE

A Tequila Pilgrimage to Ben Black Elk, Being a True and Accurate Account of Two Complete Idiots in the American West, With Beer

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I wanted a real Democrat this year. My party didn't run one. Instead I'm voting for a man with two leaked tapes and an FEC complaint over his own family's paychecks, and I wrote 3,000 words explaining exactly why I'm doing it anyway. Not a clean endorsement. Wasn't trying to write one.

joadt.substack.com

The Vote I Don't Really Want to Cast

My case for Dan Osborn, warts fully included

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

No men should run for office. Not one. Democrats dropped Graham Platner in 48 hours over an allegation. Republicans keep accused men in power for years,Hegseth, RFK Jr., a president found liable for sexual abuse and elected anyway twice. Same accusation. Different chair.

joadt.substack.com

No Men Should Run

On Graham Platner, an old boys club, and a chair that never asked anything of me

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dadude @ukwebfan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Stoopid merely elects Republicans! No bootlicker men No fascist men No corrupt men No billionaire men

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Vivian M. Lumbard @vivian-m-lumbard.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

"The chair does not belong to him. The office does not belong to him. The party does not belong to him. The voters do not belong to him. And certainly the people who work beneath him do not belong to him. The chair is borrowed. For a little while. That's all."

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Peggy Stuart @peggystuart.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Women––especially Black women––have to be good at getting things done and solving disputes.

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Tooey @sueric.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It’s about damn time we let women run shit.

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

joadt.substack.com

No Men Should Run

On Graham Platner, an old boys club, and a chair that never asked anything of me

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

CNN, MS NOW, Politico banned from the WH today. Unfavorable coverage, he said, plain as that. And the press corps stayed. He didn't take away your access. He took away your excuse. Full letter's up. Not gentle.

buymeacoffee.com

Why Did You Stay? — Tom Joad

Post by Tom Joad

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Jacki @ftd1969.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

"I want to ask you something, and I want you to actually sit with it instead of reaching for the talking point you've already got loaded. Why the fuck did you stay?" Really, why? I really don't know if network management talk to each other, but bet the journalists do. Protest en mass!

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Vivian M. Lumbard @vivian-m-lumbard.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

"Report what's true, plainly, without hedging it into mush to protect a seat you shouldn't want back in the first place."

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

If anyone is still on Facebook,I’m trying to build my account before the Midterms. Would love to see you there www.facebook.com/share/19RedT...

facebook.com

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

buymeacoffee.com

Why Did You Stay? — Tom Joad

Post by Tom Joad

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🧝🏻‍♀️⚡️kimmie stardust⚡️🌳(The Dread Pirate kimmie🏴‍☠️) 🐦‍⬛ @kimmiestardust.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

💙 Dude, how I wish that we were neighbors and Patricia and I could drink that coffee together. My husband had a birthday just the other day. He’s a real quiet guy, but I bet you guys would find it couple of things to talk about. HB, Tom Joad. Yay for cake.

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Bridget 🦋 🐸🌸📎🕊️💙 🇺🇦🇨🇦🌞📚🎶🌍🍀 @bawalker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Happy Birthday Tom! Wishing you an excellent year ahead! Keep writing my friend!

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Peggy Stuart @peggystuart.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

My husband turns 85 tomorrow. Congratulations on being a Virgo!

Aforementioned husband, sitting in a chair with a brown miniature poodle in his lap.

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pegofnevada.bsky.social @pegofnevada.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Happy Birthday and thank you for the words that may be slower coming but are meaningful nonetheless.

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Jen Was Here 💙✌️ @jennifersydney.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Happy birthday, Tom! Really moving work, as always. Thanks for sharing your gift with the world.

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Kathy Mortensen 🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦🇺🇸 💙 @kathyswords.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Happy birthday. Way to understand the layers. Life is certainty in uncertainty and we live in see and embrace wisdom of old

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Ry Mrrll @bigthinker.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Haven't read it yet, but I'm sure i can relate. My 67 was last march.

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Christopher @neilyoungsaveus.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Good band 😉

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Turning 67 today. Wrote about it…grandsons, a chipped mug, a paperback that cost a dollar, and a line from Dostoevsky I finally understand. Cake's non-negotiable. My newest article substack.com/@tomjoad3/no...

substack.com

Sixty-Seven

On existing, mostly on purpose

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Started writing here because I wanted a place where the words had to do the work, not the algorithm. If that sounds like your kind of place, come give it a try. Please subscribe.

substack.com

Tom Joad | Substack

His debut collection, Nine Miles, was a #1 Amazon Bestseller in New Releases in Anthologies. He's currently at work on a novel.

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David Hart @hartdp2000.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Thanks for this Tom. “Do the old owe the young something back, …I ask myself that one too. Yes. The humility not to spend the whole house down to the studs on the way out the door. To leave behind more gratitude than I think my own generation has managed to show for what it's been given.”

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David Hart @hartdp2000.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This stuck with me: “Do the old owe the young something back, …I ask myself that one too. Yes. The humility not to spend the whole house down to the studs on the way out the door. To leave behind more gratitude than I think my own generation has managed to show for what it's been given.”

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Red Lori Bright Eyes A Fucking Bitch @redloribrighteyes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I have spent a lot of time talking about abuse because it's what I learned growing up. In my adult life, I've pursued something else though. And I feel like in THESE times, this is an even more important set of principles to share. We can have these. 2xs 2 fit all alt txt bsky.app/profile/redl...

Principles of Virtue
Always tell the truth, represent yourself accurately, and describe others fairly.
Be transparent about your motives, principles, methods, and intended outcomes.
Accept legitimate calls for accountability, engage with criticism honestly, and accept appropriate consequences.
Make only promises you intend to keep, represent your actions truthfully, and follow through on what was agreed.
Protect institutions, communities, and environments from deliberate harm; address problems honestly rather than creating or worsening failures for personal gain.
Strengthen support systems, expand access to resources, and help people build healthy connections and independence.
Distribute resources fairly, prioritize those in greatest need, and ensure that essential workers and vulnerable communities are adequately protected.
Respond to crises equitably, reduce harm wherever it occurs, and never exploit suffering for political or personal advantage.
Hold those who cause harm responsible and never blame people for the abuse or mistreatment inflicted upon them.
Acknowledge who has been harmed, take responsibility for your role, and respect rather than appropriate others’ methods and symbols of self-defense.

Allow meaningful scrutiny, cooperate with independent investigations, and make relevant information accessible.
Use respect, honesty, safety, support, and empowerment to protect people from abuse.
Admit wrongdoing, apologize sincerely, repair the harm where possible, and change the behavior that caused it.
Treat other people’s needs, rights, and well-being as important, and prevent or minimize suffering caused by your actions.
Protect people’s ability to make informed choices, exercise their rights, and maintain agency over their own lives.
Work to reduce vulnerability, improve stability, and give people the resources and security needed to live independently.
Act with honesty, fairness, restraint, and compassion, and refuse to harm others in pursuit of what you want.
Protect the right to dissent, encourage open discussion, and respond to disagreement without retaliation.
Normalize all of the above.

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

What do we owe each other across the gap of a generation? Not repayment. Not a balanced ledger. Something else entirely and it's the part every policy paper leaves out. joadt.substack.com/p/what-we-ow...

joadt.substack.com

What We Owe

On trust, chance, and what one generation owes the next

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Vivian M. Lumbard @vivian-m-lumbard.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The more we learn, the worse it gets.

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

A 71-year-old man vanished for 34 hours in my town. No wallet, no phone, half the county searching. He walked home on his own. “He may be walking into a world he no longer recognizes." substack.com/@tomjoad3/no...

substack.com

What He Might Have Been Looking For

On a man who walked into the dark and what the rest of us are still looking for

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

substack.com

What He Might Have Been Looking For

On a man who walked into the dark and what the rest of us are still looking for

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Stopped at a half-empty Cabela's in Sidney, Nebraska. Talked to an old man who's worked there since before the building existed. Told him this might be the moment for Democrats to win working people back. He wasn't buying it. "Nobody's shown up yet." joadt.substack.com/p/nobodys-sh...

joadt.substack.com

Nobody's Shown Up Yet

A morning in Sidney, Nebraska, and what it might take to earn back a working man's trust

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Ashley Holden 🩷 M.Ed. @mrsholden2019.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I need to raise $1,407 as quickly as possible, for upcoming tests and scans for my stage 4 metastatic melanoma. Please share this! I know those in the position to help are out there! I just need your help finding them! ❤️ I'm so grateful for every repost and every donation. #Cancer #Stage4

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Maybe the danger isn't the post that snaps. It's the one that never quite breaks, until nobody's left who remembers it was ever supposed to hold anything. joadt.substack.com/p/the-rotten...

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Vivian M. Lumbard @vivian-m-lumbard.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

"On a fence post, that's the base, right where it meets the ground, the part you can't see unless you kneel down and look. In an economy, the base is the same as it's always been, wages, housing, the cost of an ordinary life measured against what an ordinary job pays for it."

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Deb @debkat.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Thank you for this. It's unfortunate so many people believe what they see from the road at 40 miles an hour and can't distinguish that from the rot that surely exists at ground level.

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Maybe the danger isn't the post that snaps. It's the one that never quite breaks, until nobody's left who remembers it was ever supposed to hold anything. joadt.substack.com/p/the-rotten...

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Jack Ingram @jacksters.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Tax the rich at 90%, like in the 1950’s and give the poor equal voice in health care, education & living a happy life, hopeful life!!!

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Roaring Lion @babasburfi.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Not only were wages stagnant during those 19 months, but coming out of COVID, inflation was running extremely hot while wages went up mildly.

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Vivian M. Lumbard @vivian-m-lumbard.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

"A house used to be the first big purchase of an adult life, not the reward for surviving one. Home prices have climbed about fifty percent since 2020. Wages have climbed about twenty-nine percent over the same stretch. That gap, twenty-one points, isn't a rounding error."

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Two trillion dollars would buy Nebraska 30+ times over. That's not what America's billionaires own…it's what they gained in 19 pandemic months while wages barely moved. A New Gilded Era: joadt.substack.com/p/a-new-gild...

joadt.substack.com

A New Gilded Era

on the numbers nobody argues about anymore

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Rude 8647 Fulk @rudefulk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

@theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social Thank you kindly. I’m honored to be included.

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A. Adams @aadams.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

That is especially nice to hear. I just finished reading “The Quiet Emergency” 20 minutes ago. I hope every day you find how much your work has mattered and influenced the world. I have been a follower for many years across a few platforms. You brought insight into my public work all along.

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SupplyChainLisa @sclisa.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Thanks for including me in ythis dynamic starter pack! Please follow! go.bsky.app/5WS2bRv

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Tom Joad™️ @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I live in the place the national conversation keeps talking about but never actually visits. This is what happens when you sit still long enough to listen instead. joadt.substack.com/p/i-live-whe...

joadt.substack.com

I Live Where the Conversation Doesn't

A note on what it means to actually listen, and why it matters more than winning an argument.

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Thomas C. Harris Just plain Tom @harrissocal.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

"I look around, and I see few others attempting to do that. There's plenty of people writing about rural America. There's fewer writing about it from within it" You should be following: @theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social

joadt.substack.com

I Live Where the Conversation Doesn't

A note on what it means to actually listen, and why it matters more than winning an argument.

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A. Adams @aadams.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

@theoriginaltomjoad.bsky.social being timely once again. Nine Miles, Argentinian beef, rancher’s perspective, American issue. Buy a copy or read it on Kindle here: a.co/d/0aXgIjb0

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